For Godcaster, all the things must be magnified or it’s not price inspecting. Each side of the Brooklyn collective appears designed to overstimulate: their six eclectic members, their out-of-breath, cosmological lyrics, and their dedication to tune titles nobody has considered earlier than (instance: “Tiger Surrogate Hunts the Praying Mantis”). They’re a band clothed in aureate imagery and devoted to taking itself critically. “We’re Godcaster and we’re the best band on the earth,” vocalist Judson Kolk introduced at a current New York present, with a matter-of-fact calmness. After slicing their tooth within the Philadelphia DIY circuit, Godcaster have developed to craft ingenious art-rock on a monumental scale, highly effective sufficient to lend credence to their confidence.
Whereas their reside present is a big a part of the enchantment, Godcaster additionally translate their livid, youthful power into their studio recordings. Beating inside their self-titled second album is the heartbeat of English art-punk band Cardiacs, mixed with a mania like what would occur if Deerhoof began a cult. Godcaster will not be background music: These songs really feel like scorching, hellish wastelands, and listening all over is an energetic train. “Didactic Flashing Antidote” is a relentless 10-minute journey that resounds in your chest. The dirge-like “Loss of life’s Head Eyed Hawkmoth” may soundtrack a demented Western; Kolk’s voice meanders and pleads whereas the band stays impossibly regular, instilling hysteria and helplessness.
Godcaster’s early work—a spate of recorded-live EPs of their Philadelphia days and 2020’s Lengthy-Haired Locusts—was looser and extra capricious, like a band that fashioned in of Montreal message boards. However as they proceed to mature, they’ve slipped into one thing that feels spiritual and hypnotic. Vocal duties rotate between members of the band, and their onstage supply is harking back to an odd off-Broadway play. Elephant 6-esque lyrics like “I see lovers converse in tone/Scent anthurium’s pheromones” and “Ecstatic response/In fleshly contraption” are urgently solid in opposition to a background knowledgeable by Native American and Greco-Roman folklore. To Godcaster, the picture of affection isn’t something lower than exploding planets or weeping demigods.
There’s a relentlessness to Godcaster’s magnitude that often verges on monotony. Whereas their new, extra centered sound is efficient—they’re safely out of “elevated jam band” territory—by the point you attain the 11-minute-plus “Draw Breath Cry Out,” it seems like they could have dealt all their playing cards. However when flutist Von Lee sings on the stripped-down penultimate observe “Pluto Shoots His Gaze Into the Solar,” her gossamer voice is arresting all by itself. “How stunning/My coronary heart is full,” she sings. It’s a significant breath on the finish of Godcaster, a vibrant contrasting wash earlier than you plunge again into the brutality of nearer “Intestine Sink Moan.” On Godcaster, the band maintains its attribute mayhem and mythology whereas persevering with to diversify: You’ll be able to already hear how far they’ll hold pushing ahead.
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